Cowon

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Cowon Systems, Inc.
Type Digital audio player Production
Founded 1995
Headquarters Seoul, South Korea

Cowon Systems, Inc. is a South Korean electronics company established in 1995. The company's focus initially was software. In 2000, Cowon expanded their business to the portable digital audio player market with the introduction of the CW100.

Cowon Systems expanded to the American market in 2000 by founding the company jetAudio, Inc. then its name was later changed to Cowon America.

Contents

[edit] Software

[edit] jetAudio

Main article: jetAudio

jetAudio is a software multimedia player which offers features such as ripping CDs, re-encoding audio and video files, recording from external sources and burning capabilities. The commercial plus version of this software includes many sound extension packs and other codecs which can play back most media files present.

jetAudio 7 incorporates an album manager, bookmarking a current position in the song and a Repeat Playlist feature. It also has a balloon tooltip feature which supports an instant messenger-style display. It also includes support for many other file types such as 3G2, AAC, AC3, MKA, OFR, OFS, RMVB, SVD, TP, TRP, TS. jetAudio comes bundled with every MP3 player produced by Cowon.

[edit] Other programs

Other products include programs like jetCast (which is bundled with jetAudio), JetToolBar and jetMailMonitor. All these programs are available for free to download from the company's website.

[edit] Hardware

[edit] The iAudio series

Cowon manufactures the iAudio series of digital audio players. See iAudio for more details.

[edit] Cowon A2

Cowon A2 in its carrying case
Cowon A2 in its carrying case

The Cowon A2 was introduced in August 2005. It is Cowon's first portable media player, featuring a 10 cm (4-inch) widescreen display and many relatively advanced features such as TV-out functionality, TV recording, FM radio, FM radio recording, voice recording & line-in recording and contains a 30gb hardrive

After the firmware version 1.59, Cowon A2 supports FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) compression level 0 ~ 8 completely.

The A2 uses the Texas Instruments TMS320DM320 processor (ARM926 CPU + C5400 DSP) and the player's operating system is based on a heavily modified version of Linux. The Cowon A2 firmware source code can be found at [1].

The Cowon A2 is Cowon's first hardware product not to be marketed under the iAudio brand name.

As of Firmware Version 1.76 Beta the Cowon A2 can support CSD files that are created from a new application called mTrans 1.0 Beta that supports conversion from various formats including PDF, PPT, XLS, DOC, and others (corresponding applications for each filetype are required for conversion).

Firmware 1.85 includes DivX Certified Portable media player certification.

As of 2007-03-07, the firmware is at version 1.87, including an update to FLAC decoder V.1.1.4.

The most recent firmware, 1.91F, supports decoding of vbr-new mp3s.

[edit] Cowon DM1

The Cowon DM1 is an accessory for the Cowon A2 that plugs into the USB-OTG port of the player. Once connected it is possible to watch digital terrestrial television in the DMB standard.

[edit] Cowon N2

An 18 cm (7 inch) PMP only released in Korea

  • 18 cm (7-inch) WQVGA (480х234)
  • Alchemy 500MHz
  • 128Mb DDR2 SDRAM
  • 32Mb FLASH
  • 2xSD
  • USB OTG
  • GPS SiRFstarIII
  • WinCE 5.0

Cowon N2 product page (in Korean)

[edit] Cowon D2

Main article: Cowon D2

A pocket media player that is fully touch screen enabled, its specifications include:

  • 6 cm (2.5 inch) QVGA (320x240) 16 million color 24 bit LCD touch screen.
  • Telechips TCC7801 - 32bit Dual Core – ARM926EJ-S/ARM946ES (16K/16K Cache, up to 192MHz)
  • User interface available in 17 languages
  • Available in black (2 GB, 4 GB, and 8GB), white (Only 4 GB), pink, green and red
  • Audio playback (MP3, OGG, FLAC, Wav, WMA, APE)
  • Video playback (WMV, MPEG4 (DIVX, XVID) - 30fps)
  • Image viewer (JPG, BMP)
  • Text viewer (TXT)
  • Voice Recorder (WMA - 32 to 256 kbit/s CBR)
  • Line-in recorder & TV-Out through included cable
  • FM radio/recorder
  • SD/SDHC and MMC card reader slot
  • Battery life: up to 52 hours music, 10 hours video
  • Optional Adobe Flash based UI

[edit] 3.40 Firmware

  • Chambers 21st century English Dictionary, e4u Korean<>English Dictionary, YBMSisa Korean Dictionary]

[edit] x.40 Firmware

  • Virtual Motion (like Opera's Mouse Gestures)
  • ID3 music library
  • SDHC cards support

[edit] x.45 Firmware

  • Notepad (Paint-like program)
  • Advanced EQ filter setting
  • Support to view BMP files

[edit] x.49 Firmware

  • Flash Lite

Cowon D2 product page

Cowon D2 Firmware page

[edit] Cowon A3

A PMP, that is an updated version of the Cowon A2. Available in US in December 2007. Available in Europe in September. Has:

  • 10 cm (4-inch) TFT LCD (800x480, 16M colors)
  • TV Out: Component, S-Video, Composite
  • Video: H.264, WMV7/8/9, DivX 3.11/4/5/6, XviD, MKV, MPEG-4/-2/-1, D1: NTSC 720x480 / PAL 720x576, 30fps
  • Audio: MP3, OGG, WMA, AC3, WAV, FLAC, WV, APE, AAC
  • Document viewer: MS Office, PDF (transcoding needed), TXT
  • Image: JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG, TIF
  • Video recording: MPEG4 from TV, VCR, Camcorder
  • Audio recording: MP3 or FLAC from line-in audio, voice
  • Built-in mono microphone
  • Built-in stereo speakers
  • Stereo headphone socket
  • FM radio and recorder
  • USB storage and host (2.0 High-Speed)
  • Capacity: 30GB/60GB of HDD storage

Cowon A3 product page

[edit] Cowon Q5(W)

A 13 cm (5 inch) PMP running Windows CE 5.0 that is fully touch screen enabled.

  • AMD Alchemy AU 1250 600 MHz
  • Windows CE 5.0 Professional
  • Movie Player
  • Video Playback without Transcoding
  • Video Format: AVI (DivX, XviD), ASF, WMV 7/8/9, MPEG 1/2/2.5 Layer 3, MP4
  • High Quality TV Out: COMPONENT, COMPOSITE
  • 13 cm (5 inch) 16M Color TFT LCD 800 X 480(WVGA) Touch Screen support
  • Music Player
  • The Finest Sound JetEffect Powered by BBE, Mach3Bass, MP Enhance, 3D Surround and 5 Band EQ audio technologies
  • Audio Format: MP3, WMA, OGG Vorbis, FLAC, WAV, AC3, ACC (only with 3rd party software), APE
  • Photo Viewer
  • Image Format: JPEG, BMP, PNG
  • Text Viewer
  • FM Radio & Recorder
  • Music recording from line-in audio
  • Voice recording with built-in microphone
  • Supports MS DRM10, DivX DRM, etc.
  • Supports HSDPA/EDGE/GPRS (data for web browsing over cellular data), WiFi, Bluetooth
  • Adobe Embeded Flash Player 7
  • USB 2.0 High-Speed Portable Storage
  • Built-in Stereo Speakers
  • 40/60 4.5 cm hard disk drive storage capacity
  • 128 MB of DDR2 SDRAM and 64 MB of NOR Flash memory
  • Built-in Lithium Polymer rechargeable battery -13 hours of audio and 7 hours of video playback (USB or standard wall charger)
  • Measures 13.8 x 8.8 x 2.0 cm
  • Weighs 375 g
  • USB Host
  • Photo Backup from Digital Camera
  • GPS Car Navigation (Optional) Tele Atlas premium digital map data of the continental United States featuring text-to-speech technology and 11 million POIs (point-of-interest)
  • Capable of supporting SNES and other Video Game Emulators


System Requirements:

  • Pentium 200 MHz or Higher
  • 32 MB Main Memory or more
  • 50 MB Hard Disk Space or more
  • 256 or Higher color display
  • USB Port
  • DVD-ROM Drive

Operating System:

  • Microsoft Windows Me/2000/XP
  • Mac OS X (Only data transfer supported)
  • Linux kernel v2.4 or higher (Only data transfer supported)

Cowon Q5W product page

[edit] Cowon N3

Announced in late December 2007, this appears to just be an updated hardware version of the N2.

Notable changes from N2:

  • AMD Alchemy AU 1250 600 MHz
  • 18 cm (7-inch) touchscreen (now 800x480 WVGA)
  • Two SDHC slots

Cowon N3 product page (in Korean)

[edit] External Links